


homesick at space camp

by sidnihoudini



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Reality, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-08-28
Updated: 2007-08-28
Packaged: 2017-10-08 00:36:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,477
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/70902
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sidnihoudini/pseuds/sidnihoudini
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>All he ever wanted was for Sammy to be happy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	homesick at space camp

All he ever wanted was for Sammy to be happy.

 

.

 

"Hey, so do you know anything about squash?"

Dean, glancing up from his half-filled plastic baggy of apples, raises his eyebrows at the guy standing across from him, on the other side of the grocery's produce stand. Flexing his fingers around the green apple he's holding, he licks his lips, and gently sets the fruit back on top of its little apple pyramid.

"That depends," He says, with this little twitchy grin on his face. This guy has a killer smile, and it's entirely worth the effort that Dean decides he's going to put into this. "What's your name?"

Mouth falling into a lop-sided grin, he picks up a second squash, and weighs one in each hand.

"Your talent on picking a uh, ripe? Squash, depends on my name?"

Twirling the now full apple bag around and around, until it's a tight little mess of gobbled see-thru nerves, Dean smiles, closed-lipped.

"You betcha."

Laughing, he sets one of his squashes back down onto the rack, and extends an empty hand over the bananas and oranges. With that mega-kilowatt smile, he takes Dean's hand, and shakes once – twice.

"Sam," He introduces, a vague smile still on his lips as they let go, slivers of palm sliding against palm.

 

.

 

Dean stumbles through his apartment door the next night, patience divided as he rips the employee tag off of his half-dress shirt, and re-sets the alarm. He works night-shift at a chain office supply store, restocking manila folders and multicoloured school binders, clips and a hundred and fifty different types of copy machine paper – he sleeps when you're awake, and when he's awake, you're sleeping.

"Son of a..." He sighs, rubbing a hand over the front of his shoulder, tracing down the tight muscle with two heavy fingers. Knots all down his back: he hasn't been following safety protocol (bend with your knees) because it gets the job done faster (when he bends with his back.)

Trying to shake it off, he re-chains the door, and, on-route to the kitchen, hits the 'play' button on his answering machine.

Empty-sounding, baseless voices drift around his mostly empty apartment, an apartment otherwise filled with chipped office supply furniture and salvaged decorations.

"This is the Dominion Bank calling for – " The electric voice cuts out, and instead, a woman's voice crackles as Dean snaps the top of his soda can open. "Mr. Dean Maebye." And back to the electronic voice, "Regarding checking account number – " Female again, and Dean's calling her Daphne already in his head. "Nine zero zero zero two four nine six six five one – " Back to electronic. "Please call us back toll free at any of our customer service help lines..."

Whatever. Dean hits 'next' with the pad of his thumb, and blindly takes a long swig of coke.

"Hey, uh." Dean freezes, soda can slippery in his grip as the condensation dampens his fingers. "So I was like, having this wicked internal debate with myself of uh, when to phone you. So I decided, fuck it, get over it, you know? And phone you. So I did. And you're... not there. Uh, shit. I mean, uh, it's Sam... Sam Winchester, you know, from the grocery sto... Uh, whatever, man I'm totally uh wasting your tape, or, or memory or whatever and... Hey, just call me back. My number's 452-4950. Okay, uh. Later."

Dean's pulse thumps through both his wrists, and when he closes his eyes, he blames the sleep schedule for the milky feeling washing through his head.

"Sorry," He whispers to himself, hitting stop, then erase. "Sam."

 

.

 

Audrey's the only chick who works nightshift at Office Depot. She's twig-like, and has these big makeup raccoon eyes that took Dean by surprise the first time they met. She doesn't smile a lot, but she smiles enough.

"God, I fucking hate assembling this shit," She's bitching, sitting on a half-constructed office chair as she screws a second together. Dean's high up on this super sketchy crane ladder, stacking boxes and boxes of paper shredders on top of one another. Every time he shifts a knee, the entire cherry picker sways, and he feels about a half foot closer to hell's gates.

Dean heaves another box up from the ground floating under him, and across to the shelves. The muscles in his upper arms burn.

"Yeah, well," He pauses to clutch his side and take a deep breath, trying not to pant. "Just be fucking happy you're not busting your ass twenty feet up in the air."

Audrey clicks her tongue and wields the screwdriver with a glare. "Whatever."

Rolling his eyes, Dean wipes his sweaty hands on the thighs of his jeans, and mutters, "Yeah. Whatever."

 

.

 

Thing is, Dean doesn't know a lot of people. No family, not even extended. No real friends, he's never been that personable and who really wants to be buddies with a technical vampire? The only humans he speaks to on a regular basis are fucking, Audrey, and his boss. And his boss is _weird_. Grenade hidden in the gym locker weird, rifle loaded and ready to go from the car trunk weird.

So when he's leaving the next morning after a night of hard labour and back pain, the last person he expects to run into is fucking Sam Winchester.

"Oh, hey," He hears someone say behind him, as the boss is doing his customary bag-check on Dean's knapsack to make sure he hasn't stolen a packet of fucking highlighters or the newest edition of Doom. "Hey, Dean."

Half-expecting to see anyone else, Dean glances over his shoulder with his eyes half-closed, already soggy with sleep.

"Hi," He says, automatically, but his eyes feed his mind, then suddenly, _oh. Sam._ "Uh, hey! I mean."

Sam's juggling a french-english dictionary and a pack of tabs for easy binder browsing. It's called a laptop, dude.

"Wow. I so didn't expect to see you here," Sam smiles, two rows of teeth kind of grin-parted in wonder. "I just, uh," He gestures to his mini office-haul as Dean has his dignity handed back to him as an 'okay' hand sign and his merchandise-free approved bag. "New semester starts next week. Preparing myself, you know?"

Dean gestures to the dictionary. "Linguistics?"

"Sorta like that," Sam nods, setting the stuff down on the front counter. Dean half-smiles up at Lydia, the only morning cashier, but turns back to Sam when Sam's fingers brush the inside of his elbow. "So, um, listen." Sam sets his credit card down on the counter, beside his dictionary, and turns back to look at Dean. "I was thinking, uh, something like we could go out tonight, or whatever?"

Laughing awkwardly, Dean points to his name tag with one finger. _Dean Maebye, Office Depot Overnight Crew. _ "Sorry, sonny. Work."

"Well, whatever." Sam laughs and hunches down to sign his credit card receipt without looking at the bill. He looks back up at Dean over his shoulder, eyebrows raised. "I'm a full-time student, which means I can do the whole channelling a vampire thing, too."

Uncomfortable laughter, then, and Dean shuffles a few steps to the left. Lydia has no more customers behind Sam.

"I," Dean starts, as Sam shuffles his plastic bag around, and pulls the dictionary out.

Sam raises his eyebrows, and Dean startles when the automatic doors _whoosh_ and slide open, somehow louder than usual. Insomnia has been on the tip of his tongue for the last few nights. He thinks the changing seasons have something to do with it, it makes everything more dream-like, even regular mornings, like this.

"Well, I'm not going to take no as an answer, Señor Office Depot," Sam grins in this flippantly charming way, as he lets the dictionary flop open in one palm, opening to a page somewhere in the middle. "I'll see you tonight."

It isn't until Dean is standing in the half-empty employee parking lot twenty minutes later that his tired brain catches up enough to think, _señor isn't french._

 

.

 

Dean wakes up just after four that afternoon, and drags himself out of bed so he can sit in his kitchen with a bowl of Lucky Charms and a beer. In the middle of idly scratching the top of his thigh, he blinks and startles when someone knocks at his front door. Swearing, he stands up, and tries to straighten out the twisted elastic of his underwear one-handed as he makes his way towards the door.

He squints, one-eyed through the peephole. Sam's standing in his front hallway, thumbing through something on his palm pilot. Dean tilts his head against the door and looks down at Sam's other hand: a case of beer. Sam is great already.

When Dean swings the door open, Sam looks up with this wicked little smirk on his mouth. Otherwise straight faced, he glances down at Dean's boxers, then back up to his sleep-rumpled head.

"Morning, sunshine," He laughs, then holds the case of beer between them in offering. Dean's lips twitch into a smile – he backs away from the door so Sam can step inside.

Dean yawns into the back of his hand, blinks away the sleep-tears, and shrugs.

"Sorry," He catches the smell of Sam's clothes as he toes the door closed and flips the lock. "Forgot you were coming."

 

.

 

So that's how it starts. And it's good right away, Sam's a funny son of a bitch when he wants to be, and Dean counts him as a fantastic fuck. Sam waits for him outside the store some mornings, when he doesn't have an early class, and usually it's after another sleepless night spent studying verb conjugation and irregular forms, and fuck if Dean has just never had the patience for that.

"My eyeballs feel as heavy as those fake pumpkins," Sam tells him one morning, nodding across to the other end of the parking lot, a brand name craft store and its night staff setting out displays full of Halloween decorations and gaudy Thanksgiving centrepieces. In the murky light of five a.m., the jack-o-lantern is sneering at Dean with this toothless grin that says something like, _ha, suck it up, keep it in._

Dean shakes his head and throws a bag full of cracked pencil cases into the backseat of his car. He uses them to steady out the lopsided, legless furniture floating around his living room, and smiles over his shoulder at Sam.

"I don't know," He says finally, shrugging as he stands up, ducking so he doesn't smash his head against the car. "That bitch winter doesn't seem to be nipping at my heels just yet."

Sam laughs and wraps his arm around Dean's shoulders, pulling him until they're chest to chest and kissing. Sam's got a good foot on Dean, but he doesn't mind so much, it isn't so bad.

"Sure, you say that now," Sam whispers, breath warming up Dean's top lip as they rest forehead to forehead. "But wait 'til Christmas comes and kicks your ass."

A laugh, and Dean swings the back door of the Impala closed. "Bah, Christmas." He even makes a squinty Scrooge eye that makes Sam laugh.

 

.

 

Dean is impossibly good at darts. It's just after Thanksgiving, and they're holed up in some on-campus bar that has enough beer and entertainment to keep them down for a night. Sam's at one of the foot-wide tables studying something about someone Dean can't pronounce the name of.

But in five throws, Dean hits the bulls eye four times.

When he walks back to his drink and his fuck, there's an unsettled feeling in his stomach. These last few days, something just hasn't been right.

His fingers grip at Sam's neck as he sneak-attack tongues him, laughing into the startled noise that comes out of Sam. One hand still holding a place in his book, Sam reaches up to hold onto the back of Dean's head, eyes closed.

One arm wrapped over Sam's chest, hand sneaking down to his belly button, Dean kisses back, and assures himself, _it's supposed to be like this. Something a lot like this._

 

.

 

On Christmas Eve, Dean stops by Sam's house to drop off a small present just before his shift at the supply store. There's a car he doesn't recognize sitting in Sam's driveway, and it isn't until he's ambled up to the front door that he even entertains the notion that they might be Sam's family.

Which is exactly who they are, his parents – and they're good people, great people, people that make Dean's heart stop and race and stop and start again. Mary and John Winchester, married for twenty five years, and Dean calls her "ma'am" now, but knows that in six month's time, she'll be lobbying for him to call her "mom."

"Dean!" Sam exclaims, fingers curled against the edge of the door as he smiles and pushes away from the door frame with his hip. Dean's smiling too, small wrapped package tucked under one arm, a case of beer hung in the other, level to his hip. "Hey!"

Leaning in, Dean mouths the curve of Sam's bottom lip, and grin-whispers against it, "I brought you something."

"My parents are here." Sam laughs softly against Dean's mouth, almost moaning when Dean brings a hand up to the side of Sam's face, and slides his tongue against Sam's barely-heard 'here.' Dean's eyes open at the mention of parents, they snap open and his fingers relax by the curve of Sam's ear. Sam laughs, and, ducking away with a flush starting across his cheeks, says, "They're in the kitchen."

Caught in a sudden hailstorm, Dean raises his eyebrows and tries to look past Sam's shoulders. He doesn't know parents, really. How they work and all that, how to talk to them – what _parents_ really means.

"Should I come back later, or..." Dean trails off and glances back at Sam, standing a step up from him on the front stoop of the little porch.

Sam shakes his head and creases his eyebrows, reaching for Dean's shoulder. "Nah, naw, come in, come on in."

Vaguely uncomfortable, Dean nods and rolls his shoulder into Sam's touch, stepping into the front hall when Sam moves back inside.

"Hey mom?" Sam's already calling, walking through the short hallway between here and there. Dean closes the front door quietly and sets the beer down just inside the hall, underneath Sam's little key hook. "Dean just stopped by..."

A blonde rounds the corner, these blue eyes that just cut Dean to the bone. Breathless for a half-moment, he straightens up and forces a smile that shows the teeth on the sides of his mouth.

"Ma'am." He offers his hand as well as his naivety. She smiles back at him and shakes his hand gently, these light hands that are pale and thin, and Dean is suddenly trying to force his smile to stick. "Nice to meet you."

Sam comes up behind his mom, slinging an arm around her shoulder as he says, "Dad's checking the oil in my car."

A hard breath of laughter, Dean lets go of Sam's mother's hand, and realizes Sam's read the confusion on his face already.

"He never believes me that I change it – top it up, whatever." Sam offers a flippant wave and lets go of his mother's upper arm, this twitchy little smile still turning up one corner of his mouth.

Dean nods, and scans the kitchen without realizing he's doing so. Sam's mother's purse on the counter, a set of keys beside it. A short stack of gifts on the table, impossibly wrapped with shiny foil paper and topped off with ribbon.

"Excuse me," He manages, after a series of uncomfortable moments that has quiet falling over the three of them like summer rain. Sam raises his eyebrows but nods anyways, what else can he do, as Dean ducks out to lock himself in the bathroom. He ends up balanced on the edge of the tub with his head in his hands.

He counts to ninety, turns the sink tap on for effect, unlocks the door, and steps out.

Immediate, warm laughter is weighing down Sam's wooden floors, and they creak as Dean makes his way back down the hall, passing Sam's bedroom, sheets still rumpled from when he woke up on them this morning.

"Oh hey, here he is." Sam's gesturing to Dean before Dean can really get past the kitchen doorway. "Dean, come meet my dad."

His chest winds up so tight and fast that he feels like the wind has been knocked out of him as Sam's dad turns around, this giant smile on his face that stretches from ear to ear. He's wiping both hands on a dulled rag, and the air smells lightly like car oil.

"Ah, so finally a face," He says to Dean, extending one hand. There's a black smudge at the inside of his his wrist, but that's it. Dean, clenching his back molars together, smiles with his front teeth, and offers his hand as well. Sam's dad shakes his hand once, twice, a lot like Sam, and then lets go of Dean's fingers.

Dean, still standing there with the stupid gift underneath one heavy arm, offers a, "Likewise."

"So, that for me?" Sam nods to the present with hungry eyes and a content smile painted across his mouth, and Dean feels the same old clock tick tick ticking inside his chest as Mary laughs and admonishes something about lost manners. Laughing quickly, Dean unlocks his knuckles and reaches under, wraps his fingers around the edge of the box, and hands it over.

"Of course," He says, can feel John's eyes burning these holes into his skin, weighs hard under the heavy stare. "Uh, well. Listen, I gotta get going, I just stopped by to..." He gestures to the gift. "You know."

Sam nods and holds the present in one hand, offering Dean a half-hug, he presses his nose into the warm spot just above Dean's jacket collar.

"Sure, sure," He mumbles into Dean, then pulls back to explain, "Dean works night-shift at a supply store downtown."

"On Christmas Eve?" Mary asks, sounding surprised.

Dean itches the side of his neck and offers a half-smile. "Gotta stock for the day-after sales, you know..." He manages, feeling uncomfortable, like he's done something wrong.

"Well, a working man," John says all of a sudden, and Sam kind of ducks his head and smiles a bit.

Licking his lips, Dean slides his hand to itch at the space below his ear lobe, and nods. "Yes, sir."

As he answers, something else is impossible, pinched on the tip of his tongue. When John smiles back at him like he's pseudo-proud, Dean bites it back, and promises to numb the feeling of lost skin as soon as he escapes.

Later that night, to calm the panic rising in his chest – it's some kind of feeling he can't place, something that hollows him out from the inside, and races up his throat as fast as he can manage to pour whiskey down it – he sneaks a bottle of booze into work, after a quick stop by the liquor store.

As Audrey is setting up a boxing day display, Dean braces himself over the crooked sink in the employee's lounge with one arm, and watches himself in the mirror as he swigs back mouthful and mouthful of booze.

"Don't do this to yourself," He whispers to his reflection, feeling like he's talking to a machine. "Not yet. Not yet."

 

.

 

A week before New Years, Sam turns up on the other side of Dean's peephole in the middle of the day, knocking and banging until Dean bitches to himself and rolls out of bed, shuffling his feet but staying bleary-eyed enough to answer it.

"What," He manages, swinging the door open. Sam looks overwhelmed, like he's searched every angle but still doesn't know what to do, like he's been locked out in the rain. Dean's tone softens almost impossibly. "Sam. What."

For three days after that, Dean listens to the Great Winchester Drama of 2007, this bullshit about how his parents don't think that studying ancient folklore and aesop history is going to amount to much of anything. Lucky Dean's got a week off from stocking, because he fucks Sam two ways from Sunday, until he isn't complaining anymore and all he really offers is a half-assed smile.

"Fuck 'em," Dean promises, feeling that suddenly sleepy pinch in his stomach again. Absently, he scratches his fingernails over his bare abdomen, face up and exposed on the bed, as Sam cradles his head in his hands and tries to drift off.

Neither of them have been able to sleep lately. Dean feels restless enough to toss and turn all day, hooked enough to stay pressed up against Sam's warm side during the night. Sam doesn't say much lately, but sometimes they lay there for what might be hours, watching each other's eyes, and it isn't some kind of lover's tryst – Dean doesn't know what it is – it's something deeper, but it isn't that.

"What," Sam whispers one night, in the complete darkness, when all he can see are the whites of Dean's eyes reflecting the street light. "Tell me you don't..."

Dean's face is stuck to the pillow, so he shifts back into a cold spot, and knows his cheek is creased. "What," He softly demands, tightening his fingers to brush up against the side of Sam's ribs.

"I don't know." Sam is quietly frustrated, but Dean is unarmed, and unaware of what to say next.

 

.

 

"Three... two... one." Dean lets go of the lever. The entire display falls shelf by shelf, bang bang bang, until Christmas memories are merely a heap on the floor, ready to be swept up and marked as a tax-write off by their manager. Audrey is balanced on top of a filing cabinet system in aisle three, and Dean can hear her eager clapping and squeals from here.

Making things almost blow up is fun.

Coughing and waving the paper-dust away from his mouth, Dean looks to where everything fell into an unceremonious heap on the floor, and grabs for the janitorial broom. He keeps a sleeve pulled over his mouth as a makeshift oxygen mask as he starts sweeping everything into an industrial sized dust pan.

"Jesus," He grumbles into the stitching of his shirt, frowning as Santa's paper-crafted head disappears beneath a piece of white and read foam board.

 

.

 

When he gets home the next morning, Sam is slouched against the front of his apartment door, asleep and half-propped up against an overstuffed book bag. Dean raises his eyebrows, and, keys ready, crouches down in front of Sam. Touches his shoulder gently.

"Sam," He whispers, using his thumb and forefinger to shake. "Sam. What's up."

Jerking awake, Sam's eyes are open and wide suddenly, and Dean feels his stomach flip over in surprise. Eyes wide, he backs off as much as he can in one shuffle of the foot, and looks into Sam's face.

"Dean," Sam whispers back at him, red bags under his bloodshot eyes.

Nodding, Dean stands up, and, heaving Sam's book bag as well, unlocks his front door.

 

.

 

"It doesn't make sense."

Dean is pacing, one hand knotted in the hair on-top of his head, features pinched. Sam's sitting at his kitchen table, and it's crooked after he accidentally toed a pencil box from underneath one of the legs.

"Dean. Just... think about it," Sam pleads, and he looks so _desperate._ Stopping, Dean licks his lips, clenches the muscles in his jaw, and turns around.

Breathing deep, he knots his eyebrows. "Say it again."

"Dean," Sam whispers, and something bounces around in Dean's chest, knocking around, it isn't pinned to anything and something inside of his head echoes _I know you know, don't make me say it again. _ "I..."

"No," Dean cuts him off, and steps back towards the table. "No, I – "

Sam's eyes are starting to get wet, these big fucking saucers that break off chambers of Dean's heart that he didn't even know he had.

"I swear," Sam promises, one palm flat against the open text in front of him. "I swear I'm not making this up."

Bottom jaw sliding forward, Dean's eyes start itching. "What if I want to stay here. I mean, I had to of had a reason for it, right? There had to be some fucking _reason,_ Sam!"

The entire kitchen table shakes, another leg slams hard against the floor, and Dean hadn't even realized how hard he'd shoved it. Now two legs are lopsided, and Sam has to catch most of his textbooks before they slide and fall to the ground.

Hands grasping for the books, Sam jumps out of his seat and looks up, managing, "I don't know, Dean. Research, that's all I've got."

"Then how do you know it's for real?" Dean challenges, scratching the nape of his neck. "How do you know? If it's this fucking, this _genie god _thing – "

Sam offers, "Djinn."

"How come I don't remember anything from my real life? That book says I'd be partly aware, that I'd _see_ things."

Somewhere inside Sam's chest, a little splinter breaks off, and Dean can see it cut off from the rest of him. He sees it, he watches Sam flinch and let one of his books drop to the floor.

"What else could it be?" Sam asks, quietly, and the answering silence is loud enough to deafen Dean completely.

 

.

 

All they can find are two butter knives, a snapped paper opener, and a dull steak knife Dean never knew he had. Sam lines them up on the coffee table, they're dulled silver so they don't gleam in the light, but Dean sees them as fucking bonfires. Dean licks his lips again, they're so damp they're starting to crack, and he's starting to crack, big long sidewalk chunks falling off of him in spades.

"If I stay here, things could be good."

Sam's working his jaw over and over, grinding his teeth and trying to keep the reigns.

"If the books, Dean if the books are right, you'd die in the... in your real..."

Dean's struggling with this, goddamnit he's fucking struggling. "Don't say it."

"Your real life," Sam manages, teeth clenched together, his hand moves fast to his mouth so he can cover his shaking bottom lip.

Dean shakes his head, and tightens his hands. "I must not have liked it. I must have hated everything, to do, to do... that."

"Something doesn't feel right here, and you know it," Sam whispers, hush-choked sound behind his voice. He glances over at the stack of folklore text, and then back over to Dean. "Why do you think I looked? _Something's not right._"

Scrubbing his hands over his face, Dean inhales through his nose – inhales exhales inhales exhales – because it's getting harder to do that, getting harder to do something as fucking simple as to breathe.

"But something else is right here, okay!" He finally snaps, glaring over at Sam with wide, wide eyes. "Something is right_ here._ And maybe I'm fucking selfish, Sammy, but damnit – "

Sam's entire lower jaw is shaking, now, and his eyelids are swollen pink like he's already crying. "What?"

"What?" Dean looks at him with his eyebrows raised, eyes glossy.

Licking his bottom lip quickly, a sharp slide of the tongue, Sam blinks. "What did you call me?"

A cold wave of water, flooding Dean over from the inside, and it's so sudden he doesn't even have time to prepare. His fingers relax, his bottom lip drops down until he can feel the curve of it against his chin.

"Sammy," He whispers, and then he's struggling again.

 

.

 

"Dean! Dean! Are you – " Hands grabbing at his face, thumbs flat and warm against the curves of his cheekbones, Dean chokes on spit or vomit or his fucking tongue, and cracks his eyes open. They're so heavy they feel like weights, like he hasn't had a decent night's sleep in months. "Dean!"

Breathing hard, throat sore and dried out, Dean feels a sharp pinch against the side of his neck – something slides through his vein, pierces his muscle again.

Twisting against the rope knotted around his wrists, Dean tries to choke on _just kidding, put me back. I didn't think the butter knife would get deep enough... _but only manages to say, "Sammy."

"Dean," Sam breathes, reaching up to cut the ropes around his wrists. The collar of Sam's jacket brushes Dean across the face. "Thank God."

Slumping forward, over his brother's shoulder when he falls from the ties, Dean closes his eyes and tries to keep the lucid feeling swimming around his brain. Warm, maybe content, that's what his sense memory wants to remember, but then he realizes: it's gone, they're gone and he's stuck in somebody's basement, posing as this fucking demon-god's breakfast.

Feeling sick and tired, Dean resigns himself to the familiar cold creep beginning to pin-prick from his ankles up.

 

.

 

"Were we..." Sam trails off and, laughing quick and uncomfortably, runs a hand through his hair.

Dean's at the little kitchen table set up a few feet away from the hotel beds, uneaten fast foot cooling before him. Technically, he hasn't eaten in days. He purses his lips, concentrating on this little scratch in the table. It's shallow, hardly enchanting, and runs an inch or two long.

"Yeah." He licks his bottom lip, and raises his eyebrows. Can't look at Sam, so he looks harder at the table. "Yeah, we were."

Sam's chewing the dry skin at the edge of his thumbnail, knee bouncing like a nervous tic. Knowing Dean's just laid everything down doesn't make Sam feel any better, especially since there are little details like this that always slip his mind.

"And were we..." He trails off again and looks over at Dean, shakily.

Dean nods silently, raising his eyebrows, trailing his fingers over the table top's scar. "Yeah," He says softly, quietly, chewing the inside of his bottom lip. "We were good together. Happy."

"Jesus." Sam's voice is sharp and pained, quiet like. "How'd it happen, what'd you wish for?"

Rolling his bottom lip between his teeth, he angles his jaw and looks at Sam through slotted eyes, across the table and across the room.

"For you to be happy," He says, quietly, with his fingers curled down against the table top. A snap-flash of panic crosses Sam's face, jerking his muscles tight, bundling them, the vein in his neck suddenly prominent. Dean blinks slow, like syrup, and looks down at his hand. "That's all."

Sam's bottom jaw is shaking like he's about to say something he'll regret. Dean waits for it, the soft words of acknowledgement and failed attempts to make him feel better, but nothing comes out. Sam doesn't say anything, all he does is drop his gaze to the stained carpet underneath his work boots.

Biting down on his lip, hard, Dean blinks three, four times, these slow movements that have his eyelids feeling weighed down with another world attached to them entirely.

"Fuck," Sam finally whispers, voice pressed against the palm of his hand. Dean looks across, and there are tears down his cheeks, big fat fucking reminders that it doesn't ever get better, easier. Not here. "Dean, I..."

Coughing, Dean shakes his head and pushes away from the table, and as he stands up, palms the table top without thinking about it, just in case one of the legs break. When the table stays steady, time worn, Dean rolls his lips into his mouth, and looks over at his brother.

"Doesn't matter," He says, and neither of them believe it. "Get your shit together, we're leaving tonight."

He can't help but catch the stunned expression on Sam's face as he brushes past the mattresses to get to the bathroom, the _wait_ engraved on Sam's wrinkled forehead. Dean clenches his jaw and jerks his head down to look at the ground as he closes the bathroom door behind him, carefully avoiding the reflection he knows he'll see in the mirror, of soggy eyes and a soggier heart. Dean pulls his t-shirt off, kicks away his pants, and steps into the sketchy bath shower.

It isn't until the water is turned up as hot and hard as it can go that Dean busts open, punching the tiled wall. Two of his knuckles split upon impact, blooming with pain and blood loss, but they don't hurt as much as this feeling in his head, the hopelessness that pours out of his insides almost as fast as the tears.

They blend into the shower water and twist down the drain, and, if Dean tries hard enough, he can almost pretend that they aren't really there.


End file.
